September 19, 2018: anarchist disaster relief after Florence, thousands of police evict defenders of Germany’s Hambach Forest, a recap of the international week of solidarity with anarchist prisoners, and much more on this episode of…

the hotwire

a weekly anarchist news show brought to you by the ex-worker

with me, the rebel girl, and normally the riot dogg too, but they went to a farm upstate…wait no, not like that! they read inhabit and literally decided they should learn farming so [they can experiment with different ways of living and combat the material and spiritual poverty imposed on us by our epoch…hmm, sounds pretty good to me. so don’t worry, the riot dogg will be back soon. bork bork!

A full transcript of this episode with shownotes and useful links can be found at our website, CrimethInc.com/podcast, where you can also find a radio-ready twenty-nine-and-a-half minute version of this episode for standard radio broadcasts, and no cussing! 
And now, the headlines…

According to the Earth First Newswire, “Minnesota regulators postponed a meeting last Tuesday on Enbridge Energy’s planned Line 3 replacement after pipeline opponents disrupted the meeting with a bullhorn and a boombox.”

In Hotwire 34, we reported on the illegal liberation of 5,000 mink from  fur-farm in Sweden. Three weeks later, we are happy to report that the fur farm’s owner has declared that he will close the farm because, QUOTE “It is not worth the effort.” The exploiters of this world are motivated by greed, but our thirst for freedom is greater than theirs for money, and that’s why we will win.

Speaking of courageous solidarity with non-human beings, three climate activists in St Louis disrupted a presentation promoting the absurd falsehood that “rising temperatures and co2 levels are benefitting the planet and humanity.” The conference, with the vague name the Gateway Eagle Council, brought together Pizzagate and InfoWars conspiracy theorists like Jack Posobiec and Mike Cernovich, far-right provocateur James O’Keefe, whose fumbled spying on J20 activists actually cost the government their case against our comrades, as well as racist ex-sheriff Joe Arpaio and the billionaire backed, alt-right linked head of Turning Point USA, Charlie Kirk. The conference was somewhat of an intellectual, suit-and-tie Unite The Right, except without the explicit neo-Nazism. However, there were plenty of links to fascists…not the least of which were some of the international guest speakers , including an MP with Poland’s far-right, anti-immigrant Law and Justice party, as well as an MP from Germany’s far-right Alternativ Fur Deutschland party, who have been behind the mobs in Chemnitz and Koethen who have been chanting straight up neo-Nazi slogans and attacking anyone who looks QUOTE “not german.” We find it promising that while the far-right are building international networks, overlapping struggles like climate activism and anti-fascism are beginning to merge, kind of like how excited we were last episode to see the prison strike repped at myriad sites of struggle, from anti-confederate statue toppling to anti-pipeline treesits. However, news of this far-right conference in St. Louis only blipped on sites like It’s Going Down a few days before it began, and with more time and more mobilization, we hope tht in thefuture this kind of conference can be shut down full stop.  

On Friday in Dallas, Texas, dozens of protesters blocked Interstate 30 to protest the murder of Botham Jean, a black man who was killed in his own apartment after a filthy white cop entered without a warrant and, as she admits, without even a claim to probable cause Rather, she has offered the lame excuse that she thought she was entering her own home and Jean was a burglar inside. However, that hasn’t stopped the police from trying to taint Jean’s image port-mortem, by searching his house and publicly releasing that they found marijuana. Cops are disgusting–there is nothing a black person can do, not even have a relaxing smoke in the comfort of their own home, that does not risk murder by cop.

The blog anti-racist Canada offers the following report:
    
“This past Saturday, members of La Meute traveled to Kanesatake ka-nes-sa-ta-key(Oka), in Quebec to hold a rally…. or something. Ostensibly, they claimed to be trying to forge some sort of ties with First Nations’ people there, but given that they showed up uninvited strikes me more as an effort to intimidate.

If that is the case, it did not go as planned, with Oka people greeting them with middle fingers, flags of indigenous struggle, and aggressively walking the streets until La Meute took off.

At least one member of La Meute tweeted out the following afterward: ’Morons. Kanesatake needs to be quarantined.’

Way to build bridges there, you alt-right idiots. The Mohawks in Kanesatake fended off a military occupation in 1990…why a few weekend warrior biker cosplayers thought they wouldn’t face serious resistance to their racist message is beyond us.

Evictions HAVE begun in Germany’s Hambach Forest . So far, police have destroyed 13 of about 50 treehouses that were built to house forest defenders and 35 people have been arrested. According to Unicorn Riot, as of this show airing no activist has left a defensive position voluntarily.” The energy company RWE is wants to cut the 12,000 year old ancient forest to extract coal from under the soil, utilizing the largest mobile machine ever created. Seriously…take a look at it, it’s Avatar come to life. Solidarity demonstrationswith hundreds of protesters have taken place across Germany, such as in Berlin and Cologne . We received the following report from a comrade in Germany about how the forest defense is going.

Hambacher Forst Report- Contribution by A-Radio Berlin

A) Hambacher Forest - it’s a name you might have heard already, and if not - it’ about time. We are talking about a 12,000 year old forest in West-Germany, or at least about what’s left of it at the moment, which is only a fraction of what it was years ago.

B) The (always) power hungry RWE company, one of the biggest German energy companies has been devouring this forest for years for the coal beneath it and pushing the forest and all surrounding communities and villages to dissapear. A small group of activists, which then grew larger, squatted the forest several years ago to protect it from being cut down and those people have been living there since.

A) RWE has now called for an eviction - supported by regional and local politicians and police hordes - at least 3,500 cops have been employed. A regional Minister for Construction decided, on the ridiculous grounds, that the tree houses in the forest weren’t fireproof and had no escape routes, and that they needed to be evicted to protect the squatters. Of course it’s not about the coal. Nooooo, it’s the safety of the activists.

B) Another side of this whole drama is that right now there is a State comission with politicians, companies and enviromental NGOs discussing the end of open coal mining in Germany. Of course, RWE did not want to wait for such talks to come to an end and preferred to present them with accomplished facts.

A) The activists were nonetheless prepared for this scenario. They are very committed and tenacious people who know this forest probably better then anyone. Maybe the Minister who ordered this raid and the company itself thought this might go fast for them. Man, were they wrong!

B) We are now at the beginning of the sixth day of this eviction, and the cops are only a bit more than half through the forest which has been populated by lots of micro-communities in the form of smaller villages called “Oaktown”, “Cosytown” or “Gallien”. All of them living in tree houses, 15 to 20 metres above ground, we don’t know how many, but surely there were more than 100 people, maybe even up to 300.

A) Despite completely crazy images evoked by the State of Vietnam-style scenarios - that’s really the words used here in Germany - no major clashes have been reported. Instead a lot of civil disobedience and simply a very firm and unrelentless use of one’s own body to withstand this attempt of eviction. The activists prepared more than 10 metres high mono- and tripods, forcing the cops to slow down their dismantling of houses and to operate in heights most of them were not trained for.

B) In a second step, they disclosed having dug holes in the ground with people locked inside to stop heavy machinery from getting near their structures - and people holding out there for more than 12 hours. Meanwhile, the cops tried their best to keep the press away and using the means we all know they will use when nobody can document it: brutal violence, pepper spray and endangering the life of activists on trees by cutting their lifelines. We don’t have exact figures, but following the reports of the legal team we can say that around 100 persons have been taken to a police station in a nearby city where nearly all of them have been released after being processed. And all of them were welcomed by fellow comrades waiting outside for legal and emotional support.

A) This weekend was - for obvious reasons - the highpoint of the massive support given to the cause from people not living in the forest. We can highlight some of those actions. One massive intervention was about getting more people into the woods to fight the evictions with blockades at the foot of tree houses. This worked quite well. Especially on Sunday several hundred people managed to cross - or better: flow through - police lines during an official demonstration.

B) To the big demonstration came at least 7,000 people, maybe even up to 14,000. It was accompanied by a second action planned, with hundreds of people bringing young trees to immediately and symbolically replace the trees already cut down by company workers.

A) Several groups organized rallys and demonstrations in their own cities all over Germany, including some occupations. One major action was the squatting of a nearby open coal mine, were activists managed to force a shutdown of the machines.

B) HambiBleibt, that’s the battle cry, HambiStays!

A) This was a contribution by the Anarchist Radio Berlin! 

For the last week, a general strike against a new tax reform has rocked Costa Rica. Unions and protesters have accused the new fiscal law of having a disproportionate impact on the lower classes. A Maxi Pali supermarket, which is owned by Wal-Mart, was looted last Wednesday during strike actions in Limon. While Friday in Puntarenas, several shops were looted, several banks were attacked, and demonstrators blocked a yearly quasi-nationalist torch-bearing ritual from taking place.

Striking dockworkers in Iquique, Chile, armed with spears and iron bars, caused nearly a quarter million dollars of damage to a mall during a strike that they have continued to undertake despite union leaders negotiating an end to the strike with management. Iquique is the site of the Santa Maria School massacre, where in 1907 thousands of striking miners were slaughtered in the single worst mass killing in Chilean history. The massacre was later avenged by the anarchist Antonio Ramon Ramon, whose brother died in the Santa Maria School. Years later, RamonRamon waited outside the residence of the general that ordered the massacre, declared his intent to avenge the slain workers of Iquique, and stabbed the general in the eye, leading to his eventual death. 


We recorded last hotwire just as evening was setting in on September 11–the date when Chile’s fascist military dictatorship of the 70s and 80s began. During the daytime, thousands marched to the memorial of the disappeared, and in the night at least 9 neighborhoods throughout Santiago  saw militant street demonstrations that lit barricades on fire, attempted to destroy a police drone with fireworks, and at least four police officers were shot. Similar actions took place in the cities of Concepcion and Valdivia. A few days later, five more police were injured after high school students attacked them with chairs, stones, and molotov cocktails. Two students were arrested, and the police used it as an excuse to further push legislation currently being considered that would fast-track the expulsion of students who are arrested for rioting.


President Trump honored September 11 by claiming that the government’s response to Hurricane Maria, which actually left more people dead on American dominated soil than the attacks of September 2001, was somehow QUOTE “incredibly successful.” Luckily, just like after Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico, people working outside of government bureacracy and disregarding the state’s authority are on the ground in the Carolinas to respond to the damage wreaked by Florence this past week. To hear more, we incredibly have an interview with anarchists doing disaster relief on the ground in Wilmington, North Carolina.

INTERVIEW

Rebel Girl: Can you tell us who we’re speaking with and what’s going on on the ground in Wilmington?

LOCAL UNLABELLED AUTONOMOUS WILMINGTON PERSON: Hi, I’m a local Wilmington autonomous person, unlabelled, and I am here with a local…

WILMINGTON-BASED ANARCHIST: I’m a local anarchist…

LOCAL UNLABELLED AUTONOMOUS WILMINGTON PERSON: And we’re here to interview…
 BLUE RIDGE AUTONOMOUS DEFENSE: I’m a, uh, autonomous relief worker, coming from out of town, working with Blue Ridge Autonomous Defense.
 MUTUAL AID DISASTER RELIEF: I am likewise an autonomous and solidarity building relief worker from far out of town. I’m here with Mutual Aid Disaster Relief. 
 LOCAL UNLABELLED AUTONOMOUS WILMINGTON PERSON: So I guess tell me some of the things that you’re able to help do and what have you seen so far coming to Wilmington?

BLUE RIDGE AUTONOMOUS DEFENSE: So part of what we’ve been trying to figure out, especially now that we’re getting a little bit more of a sense for conditions on the ground is just, you know, being like a mutual aid solidarity organization or organizations, instead of trying to be a defined crew of people who are like the helpers helping the helpees. We’ve been trying to figure out how to organize it. You know, like help local folks organize mutual aid networks. One of the challenges we’ve been figuring out, is currently in Wilmington there’s already been a whole lot of flooding, a whole lot of hurricane damage. People who’s roofs are collapsing in from the rain, people who’ve had houses knocked over by trees, felled trees, or we’ve seen roofs torn off by the wind and things like that. And there’s also the flooding, so we’ve talked with people who are still living in apartments that have floodwater. You know, the apartment itself is flooded up to their thighs and they just have to wade around in that water in order to do cooking and they have infant children. The flood waters are only gonna be rising from here, so there’s gonna be a lot more people who will be displaced from their housing, So we’re anticipating there’s gonna be an ever-increasing housing crisis of just people who don’t have a place to stay, can’t stay in their own place anymore, needing somewhere safe and dry. On top of that, there’s been sightings of ICE and Border Patrol vehicles in the nearby town of Kinston, North Carolina and also here in Wilmington. So we don’t know exactly what ICE and Border Patrol are up to here, but it just seems like if they’re here it is going to be particularly unsafe for undocumented folks to be seeking assistance in any of the shelters, so that’s part of the urgency behind also trying to figure out some kind of autonomous and decentralized mutual aid structure, so that people who have particular vulnerabilities like that and wouldn’t be able to feel safe in a shelter can still find a safe place to stay without having to have eight people trying to organize all of that. 
 MUTUAL AID DISASTER RELIEF: We’ve done a lot of supply distribution, particularly to neighborhoods that, tend to get overlooked or are full of people who don’t have the resources to evacuate, don’t have the resources to do a lot of storm prep and don’t have the resources necessarily to self-advocate to put claim on or to get to places that supplies are distributed, so we try to bring stuff to them as well as again helping with things like house repair and, in the spirit of solidarity not charity, to ask them what they need and to get information from them about other places that are in need, needs they know of that we haven’t thought of, etc.

Other challenges are friction with other organizations, particularly large state-backed organizations or simply large and wealthy organizations that have very set ways of doing things that don’t necessarily appreciate “competition.” We’d like to hear more from y’all, I think, as people who are local to the area and have a little bit more knowledge of what it was like before what’s going on now. 
 LOCAL UNLABELLED AUTONOMOUS WILMINGTON PERSON: I guess for me, being here, what I’ve found is, ya know, you find the worst and the best of people in situations like this. It’s nice when you see the best of people, not so nice when you see the worst of people. I did hear something about ICE coming here, and I just think that’s terrible. I think in a crisis situation, you shouldn’t be looking to make things harder on any human being ’cuz that’s not humanity. Also, one of the things that I found very frustrating is, is that prior to this all starting, the governor was on talking about how they emptied jail cells just to put looters in prison. Also, price gougers. And while I believe it’s completely wrong for price gougers to be doing that kind of thing at a time of crisis, generally if people are looting, it’s usually because they’re in desperate need of something. That’s just been my experience of what I’ve found in conversations with people. And, first of all, if you can let people out of prison because you’ve now felt that they weren’t really that bad of a crime, why were they in there in the first place and why are you out there looking for people committing a crime instead of out there trying to help people that are in need. Government is very narrow-minded and they don’t look at the whole picture, they don’t see people as people. It’s different if you live in a $500,000 home and your power’s out and you have a sick relative that’s living there with you, oh well let’s go help them, but what about all the sick people living in a place that don’t even have a phone to be able to make a phone call and get help. Who’s checking on them? 
 WILMINGTON-BASED ANARCHIST: Also, regarding the arrests and jails, we only heard basically through word of mouth while the storm was going on and we had no power that five people had been arrested for looting a Dollar General and then we heard that the people that did that in the area that it was then kind of put the whole area on curfew until 5 o’clock and that part of Wilmington is mostly low income and mostly people of color that live there and i could only imagine- I mean, it was a Dollar General, it wasn’t a Best Buy, which, like, even if it was a Best Buy, I don’t care then, either, but it’s a Dollar General, what are you really gonna get? And the manager didn’t even wanna press charges or have them be arrested, the people that were arrested for looting. I mean, it’s typical. That part of town is the town that’s got the police station, that’s heavily policed, people are always gonna be getting harassed by the police, so of course they went after those people, but they’re not doing anything about people that are price gouging, people that are out selling generators and stuff. 
 LOCAL UNLABELLED AUTONOMOUS WILMINGTON PERSON: For double the price! 
 MUTUAL AID DISASTER RELIEF: The concept of enforcing a curfew is always interesting to me because to actually enforce a curfew is incredibly resource intensive, especially in a town that’s fairly spread out like Wilmington, like the number of people you need doing that. Which means those people aren’t helping people out or working to do anything else, and you’re spending resources on that. On the flip side, if you’re not actually planning on enforcing the curfew then you’re engaged in a pointless exercise in authority who’s only purpose is if you choose to hassle somebody, now you have some legal pretext for generically being like “Well, you have to do what I say now, ’cuz you’re out after curfew.”
 BLUE RIDGE AUTONOMOUS DEFENSE: One other thing we’ve noticed as we’ve started doing supply drops in some of the more low-income, marginalized neighborhoods, you know like, people in those neighborhoods have told us that they’ve seen relief vehicles go by and tried to flag them down. They’ve all refused to stop and so we were the first people to stop in any of those neighborhoods and just be like ”Hey, are you alright? Do you need anything? What do you need?" So, yeah, it was- it’s been, um, it’s been really… incredible, I guess, to see, like, how quickly those connections can be made with people, like between us as perfect strangers and just, like, how much, like, mutual appreciation there is and, um, also, how much connection there is to be made over a mutual hatred of the cops.

Thanks so much for speaking with us and stay safe out there! 
In our shownotes, we have links for donating food and relief materials to groups like Mutual Aid Carrboro, Mutual Aid Disaster Relief, and Blue Ridge Autonomous Defense. Please check them out!

In the working class towns of Lawrence and Andover, Massachusetts, just half an hour north of Boston, multiple gas explosions and fires destroyed houses, killed one person, and left at least 10 more injured.

Police tweeted out a google map marked with the locations of all of the fires and explosions…however they took it down soon after because in the top bar of the screencaptured browser there were favorited links for all of the leftist groups that the police were monitoring. Why weren’t police favoriting links about the dangerous conditions of poorly developed, low-income neighborhoods with neglected houses owned by greedy slumlords? Because police protect property and go after those who challenge the organization of society according to a hierarchy of wealth. Police. Are. Scum.

 Evan Greer, the genderqueer anarchist riot folk musician, who grew up in Andover tweeted out the following soon afterward, which echoes the principle of decentralized and autonomous relief that our comrades in wilmington brought up, QUOTE, “I grew up in Andover next to Lawrence. Super important to understand that Lawrence is the poorest community in New England with a huge immigrant population. Don’t give $$ to the Red Cross. Give it to local community groups there who will be supporting residents for the long haul.”     

One of those groups is Bread and Roses Lawrence, whose name is taken from the 1912 Lawrence textile workers strike, organized by the Industrial Workers of the World. The strike came to be known as the Bread and Roses strike for the popularity of a James Oppenheim poem as a rallying cry amongst the workers:

“Our lives shall not be sweated from birth until life closes; Hearts starve as well as bodies; give us bread, but give us roses!”


And speaking of lyricists, in this month’s episode of Trouble, subMedia explores hiphop as a potent site of revolutionary politics, drawing on the first hand knowledge and experiences of some of Turtle Island’s baddest grassroots emcees. It drops on September 25th at 8pm on sub.media . check it out!

##REPRESSION ROUNDUP

In this week’s repression roundup…

Imam Siddique Abdullah Hasan, a revolutionary organizer and outspoken advocate of the national prisoner rights movement has appealed the Ohio Department of Correction decision that has restricted him from communication access for a year of more leading up to the August 21- September 9 nationwide prison strike. The IWOC is asking people to call Warden Richard Bowen at 330–743–0700 and demand that the prison restore all of Hasan’s property, his JPay kiosk access, and remove the barricades from his cell. There’s a sample script in our shownotes.

All of the Vaughn 17 have been relocated to the same facility. And while they’re glad to be reunited, being all together means that the prison can easily repress all of them as a group. Since their relocation, they have also been experiencing new and intensified forms of repression.. This repression has led them to go on a recent hunger strike and they are asking for support in the wake of retaliation. They’ve issued 7 demands and supporters are asking people to call Warden Robert May at (302) 856–5280 and insist the prison meet the Vaugh 17’s demands.

There were 8 arrests in Denver after a Queer Resistance Rolling Dance Party was attacked by Proud Boys and then cops on September 15th. There’s a link to a fund to help those arrested on our site.

Berkeley PD has been doxxing arrested protesters on twitter, opening them up to harassment. Documents obtained by @lucyparsonslabs show that BPD published this information on social media in order to create a “counter-narrative” favorable to the police. BPD Officials said the “social media-driven protests” have created the need for a “Twitter protocol for mug shots” and acknowledged that the tweets would get “broad national exposure”. One police email had the subject line, “Info flow from Jail to Twitter.” The policy also made clear that police would post mugshots on Twitter only when the arrests were “protest related”. As if we needed more proof that the cops and the klan go hand in hand…Check out @lucyparsonslabs for updates and more info. There’s a detailed report on Itsgoingdown about the horrific ongoing harassment of Leslie Hernandez and her son Aaron McDonald, who is a prisoner held by Indiana State Prisons in Michigan City, Indiana. Leslie, and others, have been holding protests outside the prison in highlight the poor living conditions in the prison and to end the ban on no contact visitation. Check out the report on itsgoingdown and call Warden Ron Neal at (219) 874–7258 and demand that they keep their dirty hands off Aaron.

Prisoners in Halifax, Nova Scotia, unceded Mi’kmaw Territory, are Ending their Strike at the Burnside Jail, and we have excerpts from the statement they issued: “Dear supporters, You are commended for your work on our behalf. None of us thought that we would gain so much support by sharing our conditions with the public. The negative perception of us inside seems so concrete that it became surreal when we began to read our demands in the newspaper, and hear that our situation has gained national attention.” The communiqué further reads: “It is with heavy hearts we write that shortly after the end of our protest, a fellow prisoner incarcerated here lost his life. The conditions and environment here speak for themselves. Since the protests started we have been locked down with even less time spent outside, in contact with our families, or getting any recreation. We know how these conditions hurt the mental health of people imprisoned here. We renew our calls for treatment of mental health, training, and programming. We ask the Minister of Justice: how many more people have to die in this facility until our cries for help are heard? We send our condolences and love to the family of our brother. We hope that our call for justice will be heard and that his life is not lost in vain. We have come to the conclusion that this is an uphill battle that will only be won from the outside support, meaning all of you. To the protestors who came right down through the woods to the back of the jail, risking their freedom to stand in solidarity with us, you gave us the most liberating feeling. We want you to know, we could hear you, and we believe you: we are not alone. Thank you. We love you, and are grateful to have you by our sides.” You can read the full statement on itsgoingdown

Last month we reported on the first half of the international week of solidarity with anarchist prisoners. At the end of august, more actions and events were held, like an info booth with pancakes in Helsinki that raised money for lawyers of the anti-fascist “network” case in Russia. There were also graffiti and wheatpasted messages in solidarity with the Network defendants in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Vologda, voh-lawg-da Cheboksary, ch-buck-sri and Kursk. Coo-rrsk In Murmansk mur-munsk, comrades held a benefit film screening of the excellent Irish movie about standing up for what you believe in the face of political imprisonment, “InTheName Of The Father.” We highly recommend it. Meanwhile, the solidarity presentation in Minsk, Belarus was cancelled after harassment from state authorities. In Astrahan, anarchists handed out leaflets that read, “Since October 2017, FSB officers have  kidnapped six activists in Penza, planted on ome of them weapons and tortured them to extract confessions of participation in the so-called ”terrorist organization “Network”. They were beaten, hanged upside down and tortured with electric shocks. At the end of January 2018, the FSB arrested two more anti-fascists in Petersburg, and they were also tortured. After solidarity actions, criminal cases were opened in Moscow and Chelyabinsk, and several more people were arrested. They were also tortured by electric shock. All these arrests are part of the repression against activists started before the presidential elections
and the FIFA World Cup 2018.“

Apparently, the support from the week of solidarity could be felt by at least some of the Penza case defendants, because earlier this month, Arman Sagynbaev, one of the defendants, reversed his previous guilty plea , which was extracted under torture, and in a statement released byhis lawyer, described the horrific treatment which led to his falseconfession. It’s hard for us to even imagine what Sagynbaev has gone through, and if this makes it to you comrade, we admire your courage for telling the truth and sticking up for yourself, and your other comrades who have also suffered at the hands of the state. Please show Arman and his codefendants some support by donating to ABC Russia.



And while hashtag #resist democrats are trying to sway november’s elections by jacking up on russiagate theories, they ignore one of the political imperatives both russia and the USA hold in common: the repression of those fighting fascism. In April of this year, anti-fascists turned out against a National Socialist Movement rally in Newnan, Georgia that saw the return of the now-ubiquitous strategy of police, with their backs turned to the fascists, heavy-handedly attacking anti-fascists and protecting neo-nazis. It’s Going Down reports that, ”It was later exposed that the City of Newnan and the Coweta County Sheriff’s Office treated a fantasy about an “antifa” rampage in Newnan authored by a far-Right militia supporter as intelligence on anti-racist planning and intentions for April 21st. “[Twelve anti-fascists] https://actionnetwork.org/fundraising/newnan-anti-nazi-protest-arrestees-still-need-our-support) were arrested, and six still face charges–two of whom are facing felonies! We have a fundraiser for their legal fees linked in our shownotes.

NEXT WEEK’S NEWS

And now for prisoner birthdays and next week’s news.

REBEL GIRL: September 26 is the birthday of Greg Curry , one of the prison activists unjustly convicted of murder for the death of a prison guard during an 11-day uprising at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in 1993. The uprising united prisoners across racial, religious, and gang divisions. Greg has a special request for his birthday this year—he’s asking people to make T-shirts that say “Free Greg Curry” on them, with “GregCurry.org” on the back and send photos of yourself wearing it to his Facebook page, which we have in our shownotes along with his address and a useful guide for writing prisoners from New York City Anarchist Black Cross.

REBEL GIRL: And now, for next week’s news, our list of events that you can plug into in real life.

REBEL GIRL: On September 21 at 6 PM, there’s a post-#PrisonStrike letter-writing night at Boneshaker Books in Minneapolis.

On Tuesday, September 25 in Indianapolis, trial begins for Aaron “Israel” Isby , but it’s not the kind of trial you might think of from listening to our show. Israel, according to Indiana Department of Corrections Watch, “is suing the State of Indiana and Indiana Department of Corrections for holding him in solitary confinement in Indiana prisons for 26 years, without an adequate review or explanation for keeping him solitary confinement. IDOC Watch, in solidarity with Aaron “Israel” Isby, calls on all socially and politically conscious organizations and individuals to attend the trial.” It begins at 8:30 AM on September 25 in the courthouse inside the Birch Bayh Building on Ohio Street. Good luck Israel, we hope you win.

Later in the month, on September 29, League of the South are holding a rally in Elizabethton, Tennessee, to protest the fall of Silent Sam and other Confederate monuments. According to the call to action, “Sycamore Shoals State Park has been announced as the venue, but the word from park officials is no one has applied for a “special permit” for the announced date. The league continues to promote the event online despite this, so [be] ready despite what state officials might [say]. Stay tuned to @HollerNetwork and @knoxradical on twitter for updates.”

On September 29, there is a demo at 6 PM in defense of Liebig34, a self-organized, anarcha-queer-feminist collective house and social center in Berlin. The house was squatted in 1990, later legalized, and their contract ends in December. The gentrifying landlord is trying to kick them out, so, again, if you want to help support the space, show up at 6 PM, September 29 at Wismarplatz plaza.

In Tucson, Arizona on September 28 and 29, Mutual Aid Disaster Relief continue their tour, which will have visited 28 states by the end of the year! On Friday, September 28 at 7 PM they will host Protectors v. Profiteers: Communities in Resistance to Disaster Capitalism, and on Saturday September 29 at 10 AM they will host Giving Our Best, Ready For The Worst: Community Organizing as Disaster Preparedness. Both workshops will be held at the MST Global Justice Center on East 26th street.

RIOT DOGG: If you’re in the Balkans, make sure to visit the CrimethInc. table at the 12th annual Balkan Anarchist Bookfair on September 28–30 in Novi Sad, Serbia. Find out more at bask2018, that’s B A S K 2018 DOT noblogs DOT ORG bask2018.noblogs.org

The anarchist book and propaganda gathering in Santiago, Chile is taking place October 13 and 14 in the historically rebellious neighborhood La Victoria. Find out more at encuentroanarquista.org.

In Brooklyn, New York on October 19 there’s a benefit punk show to raise some funds for recently released long-term political prisoners. It’s at 8:30 PM at Pine Box Rock Shop and no one will be turned away for lack of funds.

On October 20 and 21 in London, England, instead of an anarchist bookfair comrades there are organizing a decentralized anarchist festival! And we are thrilled at this proposal—bookfairs are great, but it’s kind of curious how events surrounding publishing became the default form of public anarchist gathering. In the early 2000s, sure, you had anarchist bookfairs, but you also had, for example, the National Conference on Organized Resistance, which had tables with books and zines, but was more focused on building skills and networks for resistance movements. Or, take the CrimethInc. gatherings, where people could come together in a space free of exchange or money, share wild ideas, and, in a small way, prefigure what an anarchist society might look like. We’re excited to see what happens with the anarchist festival in London, andif you want to be part of it e-mail anarchistfestival(at)riseup.net.

From October 26–28, there’s also an anarchist bookfair in Lisbon, Portugal.

The Aftonomi Space in Yogyakarta, Indonesia is raising funds to equip their infoshop with everything necessary to…publish books, run an alternative school in a local village, house a chapter of the Anarchist Black Cross Indonesia, and run a few counter-information sites. Yogyakarta was the site of some impressive anarchist resistance on May Day, and some severe ensuing repression, which led to the end of the Libera cafe and infoshop, so now anti-authoritarians are in need of a new social center. We have links to donate to help get Aftonomi off the ground in our shownotes.
 And lastly, the 2019 Certain Days: Freedom for Political Prisoners calendar is now out. The calendar is themed around is Health/Care, and it features art and writing from current and former political prisoners like David Gilbert, Mike and Chuck Africa, and Laura Whitehorn. Find out more at Certaindays.org

OUTRO

REBEL GIRL: And that’s it for this Hotwire. As always thanks to Underground Reverie for the music, thanks to our comrades in Wilmington for speaking with us and thanks to the forest rebels in Hambach for the update . Stay in touch with us by e-mail to podcast[AT]CrimethInc[DOT]com or follow us on Twitter @HotwireWeekly . Don’t forget to check out all the links, mailing addresses, and useful notes we customized for this episode at CrimethInc.com. You can subscribe to The Hotwire on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts, just search for The Ex-Worker. You can listen to us through the anarchist podcast network Channel Zero. Believe it or not, every Hotwire is radio-ready, so feel free to put The Hotwire on your local airwaves. If you do, let us know so we can plug your station.

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